


White

by reckingstacks



Series: Memory Cell [2]
Category: Neoscum (Podcast)
Genre: Childhood, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 03:05:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17520812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reckingstacks/pseuds/reckingstacks
Summary: Waking up isn't a one-time event. Maybe things will be better this time.





	White

**Author's Note:**

> WHAT'S UP I didn't intend to write a sequel to Blue but I started typing and... accidentally did? woops? These are very spur-of-the-moment fics so I can't guarantee more of them in the future and I don't know if they're really leading anywhere I just like to get deep into characters' heads and I'll keep writing for as long as doing that is interesting to me

Awake. You're awake.

This time, when you open your eyes, you are met not with blue, but white; perfect, pristine white, on the walls, on the floor, on the bed.

The bed. You're on a bed. Your body has weight, now, and sinks into the mattress slightly. You look down. Skin, hands, fingers, like before, no longer tinged blue. White sheets cover your body, and a white gown beneath that. It's... soft, and you take a moment to run your hands over the fabric. The sensation is new. You try to move, and at first, it comes so much more easily than it did in the blue. You feel like you're slicing clean through the air in comparison as you lift your arms, pull at the sheets, slide them off your body.

There is a complete absence of urgency in your desire to explore your surroundings. Rushing into things ended badly last time. Instead, you turn your attention inwards, and examine yourself. You can't shake the fascination that comes from watching muscles shift under your skin, tendons flex and relax, or even simply from running your fingers along your arm and feeling your hair stand on end. The one thing that eludes you is your face. You can feel a broad nose, and a rough mop of hair on your head that doesn't quite reach your peripheral vision. (It's dark, you think. You tried to pull some out to take a better look, but it hurt and you only managed a few strands.) That's about it.

You remember that reflections exist. You can see them in mirrors. Is there a mirror?

You finally - perhaps reluctantly - take a better look at the room around you. The white everywhere is so bright it almost makes your eyes ache. The furnishings are sparse. There's a nightstand beside your bed with a lamp on it that you can't imagine needing any time soon. There's a dresser, almost bare save for a few geometric objects you can't even try to guess the purpose of. A plastic chair. A small bin. Some things set into the walls - power outlets, a couple of pairs on two of the walls, but also a set of coloured buttons by the door.

_The_ door? _One_ of the doors. There are two.

This one has a window set into it that runs from top to bottom, but the glass is frosted and impossible to see through. It's shut. _Locked,_ says something in your head, and you somehow know it's true.

The second door, on the opposite wall, is unlocked and ajar. A bathroom, you realise, from the shadowed sliver of the room inside that you can see from the bed.

There are definitely no mirrors in this main room. Do bathrooms have mirrors? That sounds right. It's worth a look, at least.

This is where you begin to realise that movement may not be as easy as you first thought. The weight of your legs as you swing them over the edge of the bed catches you a little off-guard. The air offers no support. Your bare feet hit the cold-- wood? tile? You don't know, but it's smooth --floor, and after recovering from the initial surprise, you stand. It feels odd. Your legs keep shaking, like they're constantly trying to correct your poor balance, and then when you try to walk, you trip and go careening into the dresser, throwing off the ornaments laid on top of it.

You drop to the floor to recover yourself, and look around to assess the damage. Two of the three objects are unharmed. One - a polished stone cube - is missing a corner, but getting a closer look at them, you think these things might not actually have any purpose at all beyond decoration. Maybe it's okay that you broke it.

After a minute, you try to stand again. This time, you use the dresser and the walls to support yourself as you shuffle towards the bathroom door. The light flicks on automatically as it swings open, and there, staring back at you from the opposite wall

Is you.

It's chilling, almost. You bring a hand up to your face and watch the you in the mirror do the same, fingers sliding up over one sharp cheekbone and through the black hair on your head. Stumbling forwards, you grab the edge of the sink, and stare intently into your own slate-grey eyes. You're young. You knew that, kind of, subconsciously. Not _tiny_ , but very much a child. You don't have a great frame of reference, so it's hard to take a hard guess. Were you like this before, in the blue? If you're seven, or eight, or eleven years old, what have you been doing all this time?

You can't remember. You can't remember anything.

Being acutely aware of your own existence like this is kind of terrifying.

Everything suddenly feels very, very real, because, yes, _you_ are _real_. This is not a dream or a game and you are not some shapeless entity floating in the void. You are a person. You are a human-- or a metahuman. (You want to say, confidently, just a plain human, but the revelation of all the things you don't know about yourself has shaken your trust in your own perception.) You are alive, and someone brought you into this world, and you don't know when or who or how or why. Was it here, where you are now? After the sedative, you remember nothing until waking up just a few minutes ago. You don't know how long you were out, or what might have happened during that time.

You feel kind of sick. Another new sensation. An unpleasant one.

Okay. Breathe. You give your reflection one last look before turning and hobbling back to the doorway. There's very little in the room to begin with, and even less worth investigating. The dresser seems like the obvious choice, but there's nothing interesting inside; just more bed sheets and some plain, monotone clothing that looks like it may or may not fit you. It's hard to judge. It's not important right now. Discarding it, you look to the only other major point of interest: the first door.

You take slow, deliberate steps this time as you approach it, letting your body and brain catch up with one another so that your knees don't just fold up and your body doesn't lurch forward too fast, and you make it to the door without having to rely on anything else for support. You want to try the handle, but at the same time, you don't. The whole world is contained within this room, and if that door opens, it means shattering the fragile illusion of control that you're just barely holding onto. So, you skip it. You don't even try. You look instead at the large, flat buttons next to the doorframe. There's one green, one red, and two blue. They're unlabelled, which complicates things, but maybe that's a mercy in the same way that not opening the door is.

You hesitate. You reach out to touch the green button. You hesitate again. Your hand hovers over it for several long, long moments,

And you don't press it.

You can't press it.

Pressing it makes everything real all over again.

You make one vain attempt at peering through the frosted glass window, but all you see is more white light. You could probably tell if someone was walking past and casting a shadow, but that's it. So far, there haven't been any shadows. Is that good or bad? You don't want to be left here all alone, but you don't want to be pulled around and jabbed with any more needles, either. You wonder what kind of people might come from the other side of that door. Closing your eyes and flipping through the garbled memories of your first conscious moments, you _know_ you saw faces, but none of them are clear enough to recall individually. Even if you could, it might not matter. Maybe you don't want to know.

So, you still aren't any closer to knowing what's going on. You still don't know who you are, or where you are, or who put you here. It's just you, on your own in this big, silent room with its oppressive minimalism bearing down on you. You don't know if or when someone will come for you and you don't know what they'll do with you when they do and you don't want it to hurt again the way it did last time.

You suddenly feel so, so small, and instinct drives you to dart back to the bed as fast as your unsteady feet will carry you and hide beneath the covers. It's still a little warm. It makes you feel a little better. Being able to grip the fabric of the sheets and the pillows - rather than it slipping right through your fingers like the blue - is comforting, for some reason. Grounding. Maybe if you go back to sleep, you'll be somewhere else again when you wake up. Somewhere less intimidating and less confusing. Your mind and pulse are racing too fast, though. For now, it seems you just have to wait, with nothing but your own speculations to keep you company.

Your thoughts drift. You wonder if you're the only one, or if there are others like you. Are they alone? Are they afraid? Neither answer to either question is comforting. You wish you hadn't thought about it.

You don't know how long you lie there with the sheets bundled up around you, staring at a power outlet just for something to look at. Time is hard. You remember clocks but there isn't one in the room and you can't remember how to count minutes or hours.

There is movement.

A shadow at the door. You sit bolt upright.

The handle clicks and emits a soft beep, and the door swings open.

"Well, well, well. Still an early riser, I see."


End file.
